Based on Ray Bradbury’s often-anthologized science-fiction story, A Sound of Thunder–I read it when I was a kid, in one of those great Groff Conklin anthologies: remember them?–this 2004 movie of the same name delivers nice cheap thrills and a few good points to ponder.
What if they really invented time travel? What if you really could go way back into the distant past, see and do things, and then come back?
Although everyone involved in this time travel project is aware that the least, tiniest, most insignificant change made in the past–maybe something as trivial as a squashed bug–might drastically and catastrophically disarrange the future, they use the revolutionary technology to make piles of money, offering a canned dinosaur hunt to bozos with more money than brains. See, as long as you tightly control everything, and nothing ever happens but what’s supposed to happen, it’s perfectly safe to do this.
Just like Jurassic Park was perfectly under control until everything got all pear-shaped and the dinosaurs got out, money-grubber Ben Kingsley’s neat little time travel junket soon winds up on the fast track to Disasterville. It’s a much worse disaster than what happened at Jurassic Park, because it affects the entire world. That’s what happens when you mess around with Time. Everything gets changed.
This movie is available via amazon.com. Granted, some of the computer-generated effects are cheesy and unconvincing. The film ran over budget and they had to use some off-the-shelf effects. But the effects that really do need to be good, are good. And Kingsley is just great as a mindless, soapy, insincere twit with bad hair.
Once again, as it has been doing practically since it was invented, science fiction warns us against trying to play God. As sinners and idiots, we are just not cut out for the job.
Glad you had some fun with this. Critics ate it alive, but from my understanding of what a lot of people say, it is fun if you are able to suspend belief!
Yeah, I know the critics blasted it. Some had silly reasons–didn’t like Ben Kingsley’s hair, didn’t like the personalities of some other characters, etc. Still, the creature effects were great fun: especially when the girl turns into a kind of walking catfish…